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Quinn Travers
Keeper of Knowledge
As the Oracle was working in the library cataloguing the collection, he came across a section of monographs from his undergraduate study. It was a fascinating moment when he realized that he had a renewed interest in the work. According to the way he told me, he suddenly appreciated how much he has grown as a scholar that works that were but assignments to be skimmed as an undergrad now merit a closer look.
It was a great moment of personal growth. Well done, Oracle.
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Something of an irony... an expansion that takes a critical look at, well, expansion!
"In spite of all this, words remain quite inadequate to describe the nature of music, and can never diminish its mysterious hold upon our minds and bodies. Hence my final words take the form of a request: listen to music. When doing so, think about your own evolutionary past; think about how the genes you possess have passed down from generation to generation and provide an unbroken line to the earliest hominid ancestor that we share. That evolutionary inheritance is why you like music - whatever your particular taste
"So listen to J. S. Bach's Prelude in C Major and think of australopithecines walking in their treetop nests, or Dave Brubeck's 'Unsquare Dance' and think of Homo ergaster stamping, clapping, jumping and twirling. Listen to Vivaldi's Concerto in B flat Major for trumpet and imagine a member of Homo heidelbergensis showing off a hand-axe, then let Herbie Hancock's 'Watermelon Man' help you picture a hunting group celebrating a kill, and with Miles Davis's 'Kind of Blue' imagine them satiated with food and settling to sleep amid the security of trees. Or simply listen to a mother singing to her maybe and imagine Homo ergaster doing the same. When you next hear a choir perform, close your eyes, ignore the words, and let an image of the past come to mind: perhaps the inhabitants of Atapuerca disposing of their dead, or the Neanderthals of Combe Grenal watching the river ice melt as a new spring arrives. "Once you have listened, make your own music and liberate all of those hominids that still reside within you." - Steven Mithen, The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind, and Body (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006). |
Quinn TraversI'm a firm believer of protecting knowledge of all genres. We can only grow from the information that is stored and endured through time. Categories |